Supelice Dreadfully Boring

Logan Dodd There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

writetopcat I find this movie difficult to stay interested in, not because the sci fi plot is unbelievable, after all, that is why we watch sci fi movies. Sci fi flicks usually have a plot that includes an element which requires us to suspend disbelief, something far outside of currently accepted scientific knowledge. This element is usually inserted into the lives of human beings we can easily relate to. That is what makes it interesting and what allows us to engage in the story. We see people acting in ways we can understand to something which is beyond our understanding. But when these peoples' behaviors deviate drastically from what we all know as rational and sane, for me at least, it becomes hard to relate to them. When Victor Caroon alone returns to earth, the scientists are attempting to help him recover and to gain some understanding from him as to what occurred to him and the other two astronauts during the spaceflight. You would expect him to receive round the clock medical attention and monitoring, especially since he seems unable to communicate and does not respond to his own name. But he is often left with only one attendant. During this time he cycles between a semi-conscious fugue state and an agitated, hysterical state, with little ability to respond to anyone. He appears delusional and out of control. Then, for the first time, he gets out of bed and takes a couple of steps before going into one of his unresponsive fugue states, standing motionless staring straight ahead. At this point the doctor decides to leave the room, with the Judith Caroon there to watch Victor. You can guess what is coming next; he is going to overpower her and escape from the medical facility. Bingo. This is completely unbelievable. Victor had never demonstrated rational behavior since his return, and on several occasions he was agitated and out of control. To leave him alone with a single female whom he could easily overpower should he become agitated again, and to do so when he was out of bed and unresponsive to commands for him to return to bed, is ridiculous. We expect to suspend disbelief with respect to the sci fi element of the plot. But when we have to do so in order to explain the behavior of the "normal" people in the movie, the whole thing starts to become a joke. You cannot take anyone in the film seriously, though we are expected to. Too bad. Some b movie sci fi movies become cult comedy films because they lack the pretense of being taken seriously. This one doesn't even do that. The writers attempted to build suspense and tension by making nearly everyone in the film emotionally labile and immature. There is less drama amongst high school girls. Even the news reporter shouts at people he is trying to get information from. This is so overdone that, again, you cannot take anyone seriously. At one point when Dr. Briscoe and Victor's wife, Judith Caroon are theorizing about what might have happened to Victor, she says: "We're creatures of this earth, we live by its terms and conditions, that's all we're able to grasp". Too bad we can't grasp or believe the behavior of the characters in this movie. This is a remake of a 50s sci fi movie which could have been done better.

larryy I really liked the old Quatermass films and even though I discovered them belatedly, being from the US, I got some enjoyment out of the TV series. But this remake was simply dreadful. The writing and direction were horrendous. Most of the time it was simply dull, but occasionally the poor actors had to deliver lines that made no sense, or go from quiet discussion to drastic scenery chewing in a heartbeat. I'm a huge science fiction fan and will watch (and enjoy) almost anything with a hint of science fiction to it. I can find great pleasure in a good B film and put up with almost anything to enjoy a bit of space travel, alien contact, or futuristic speculation of any kind. But I had to give up after about 36 minutes of this. I skipped forward, dropping in once in a while if anything looked remotely interesting. It never was. Partly because it was live, partly because it was cheap, and partly because the people who created this were completely lacking in intelligence or imagination, it was utterly without even a pretense of supporting special effects (e.g., monitors with important data the actors are all discussing are tilted away from the camera so you only see the back of the monitor), the sets were plain and very few, the audio was terrible, the whole show was dark and dreary looking, and the ending was as uneventful and lame as any movie or television program I've ever seen. Do not waste your time. It's not even interesting as a curiosity. There is absolutely nothing to recommend it.

Matt Male We watched this the other night because of the reputation of the cast - particularly Mark Gatiss and David Tennant - not to mention the "iconic" nature of the name Quatermass. At the time we didn't know that it had been recorded live. Hence we had no idea why there were no special effects, strange Apprentice-style flyover shots of London, not to mention some bizarre prop choices (what *was* that thing that fell on the floor in the art gallery?!). Of course these were either caused by, or designed to overcome, the technical limitations of a live broadcast.However I still don't understand the anachronisms. If it wasn't for the Tate Modern and the BBC news bulletins, there would be no reason to think this wasn't a 1950's period drama. The dialogue was in the post-imperial stiff upper lip tradition and the newspaper reporter was, bizarrely, a teddy boy. The saddest thing is the complete failure of the programme to create any tension, fear or even intellectual curiosity on the viewer's part.A wasted opportunity. They should have given this to the Doctor Who production team and done it properly - i.e., not live.

David Brown I haven't seen such a mess as this on the BBC in a long time.The script is straight from the pioneering 1953 TV series, when spying on earth from a satellite was a futuristic idea, and travelling in a spacecraft 500,000 miles from Earth was a step into the unknown.But crazily, it is updated to the 21st century, where all this is massively anachronistic.The production is also 1950s-style. It is shot in live action (much was made of this at the time, but what does it add?), hand-held cameras are artlessly handled, the sets and cast are both dreadfully impoverished, e.g. Mission Control consists of three people in a bunker with a couple of laptop PCs! The woman in Mission Control takes over as the sole nurse in the hospital room, etc, etc.In a genuine 1950s production you could live with all this, of course - or perhaps if it was a spoof on the 1950s. But this is apparently intended as a serious drama! It didn't work for me.